In which we have a bit of a fight.
When we left our brave (reckless?) adventurers they had taken Irena and Ismarck out of Barovia and begun traveling to Vloki via carriage and floating disk. They reached a bridge where a cloaked figure awaited them, and hostilities commenced with a very painful psychic attack from the mysterious stranger...
In spite of the ringing pain in his head, Gilligan moves first, healing Sadun with holy energies before moving away from the foe's immediate vicinity. Sadun moves next, anger flashing in her eyes as she slices the man with her axe, dealing 9 damage. He barely seems to notice the hit though. Vivi, remaining at a distance, attempts to disable him with Tasha's Hideous Laughter, but he resists the spell (or is unaffected entirely?) Balazar opens with the fire breathing gambit, but the man is able to dodge out of the way, patting out some minor fires on his singed cloak. "Oh, looks like we have a baby dragon here" he taunts, infuriating Balazar. The stranger then saunters over to Gilligan, ignoring hits from both Balazar's sword and Sadun's axe though both hits draw blood. "Don't run from me boy," he threatens, and slashes Gilligan multiple times with his scimitar. The first slash connects with Gilligan's flesh, drawing blood and a hiss of pain. Gilligan is able to raise his shield and ward off the second blow, and the third deflects from the goblin's shoulder plate.
From behind him, Elle fires an arrow, hitting the stranger square in the back. "We've got another feisty one!" the man crows. "I'm beginning to like you!" Our party grit their teeth and press the attack, disturbed at how casually he is treating the situation. Gilligan channels holy energies into his mace and connects with the man's side, but he is able to dodge both of Balazar's sword strikes. Sadun roars in rage and smashes her axe into the man again, knocking him back a pace an into a trio of magic missiles fired by Vivi. He only laughs. "Is this all you have? How weak!" And again the laughter begins to echo in the heads of those closest to him. Balazar collapses, unconscious from the mental strain, and Sadun staggers (reduced to exactly half her HP again). For the first time the man loses his mocking grin, and he stabs Sadun savagely (critical hit! That rolled only 9 damage... leaving Sadun with 7 HP). Sadun falls to one knee, breathing raggedly. "Why won't you die?!" he screams at her, stabbing twice more. The first misses, but the second hits Sadun in the already open wound, and she falls forward. (It did exactly 7 damage). At this the man visibly shakes himself, regaining his composure. He turns to the rest of the party, brushing dust from his shoulder casually. "Now where were we?" He asks, as he dodges an arrow from Elle.
Talna puts on a burst of speed and runs up to Sadun, casting a healing spell before stepping back away from the stranger. Sadun's gaping wound closes, and her eyes flutter open. Gilligan shouts "Face me and leave my friends alone!" as Sadun stands up, screaming in fury and hitting the man again with her axe.
With a calculating look, the man simply steps back a step, and puts his scimitar to the unconscious Balazar's throat. "Attack again and your friend dies."
(Elle shoots him anyway. And he stabs Balazar in the throat. The DM asks if that's what we really wanted, and gives us a few minutes. We decide to rewind that a bit...)
Elle mutters a spell, empowering her arrow to strike true when she releases it, but holds her fire. Talna attempts to disguise the casting of Healing Word by shouting insults at Balazar, but the healing spell does nothing (we realized Balazar is undead now, and healing magic doesn't affect him...) "The man laughs at her attempt. "You're not a very good cleric, are you?" He presses the scimitar closer to Balazar's throat, slicing loose a scale, but does nothing more. Gilligan attempts to move closer to Balazar, but before he goes 10 feet the man calls him up short. "What do you want from us?" Gilligan asks. "To test you," the man replies. "Did we pass?" "Not even in the slightest."
Sadun, still feeling the effects of her fury, begins to swing her axe again, but at the sight of the sword tip at Balazar's throat, her protective instincts are able to interrupt her fury, and she stops herself before completing the attack. Vivi casts True Strike, to cause their next attack to connect, and waits for an opening.
Having satisfied himself as to our relative weakness, the man grabs Balazar by the hair and drags him away from us, keeping the sword at Balazar's throat. "These are you champions Irena? These are the ones supposed to protect you? They can't protect themselves!" Talna swears at him in Undercommon and makes a rude gesture to drive the point home. "They can't protect you!" he continues, ignoring the drow cleric, "Only Strand can. Stop this charade and join me." He turns his attention to those of us still conscious. "You will never leave here. You are all bound for the Death March." And with that, he lifts Balazar's body and hurls it over the side of the bridge into the river below. "I'll see you later," he says, and disappears.
With a shout, Elle and Gilligan rush to the edge of the river. The bank is a steep slope, 10 feet up from the level of the river right now, and neither the gnome nor the goblin can reach Balazar, who has miraculously landed on his back. Talna runs and jumps into the river, grabbing Balazar and swimming against the current to keep him level with Gilligan and Elle's position. A moment later, Sadun runs to the side of the bridge and leaps in as well. Ismarck and Irena drive the carriage closer, Irena rummaging in the cart and coming up with a rope.
Elle drags the bloodstained rope previously used to tie up the vampire thrall in the church basement from her pack (and rolls a natural one for tying a knot), loops the rope around the gargoyle statue's arm a few times and flings the other end of the rope into the river. As it's not actually secured it does nothing to help our predicament.
Although Sadun and Talna are keeping the river from whisking him away, Balazar's armor now starts to drag him under the water. Seeing this, Gilligan slips off his backpack, and extends it over the edge of the river bank by its strap while lying prone, but his short arms do not give him enough reach for anyone in the water to grab hold. Talna and Sadun manage to lift Balazar's head above water again, but make little progress otherwise.
Arriving at the bridge, Irena (rolling another natural one for knot tying) also fails to secure her rope to the statue, and Ismarck is barely able to fix the issue. Finally, Bismarck gets a knot tied and throws the rope in Sadun's direction.
Elle climbs over Gilligan and grabs the other backpack strap, lowering herself towards the water and reaching out to the people in the river. Gilligan remarks "How does it feel to have your life in a goblin's hands?" "Not the time to talk about it!" Elle responds. However neither of them lose their grip. Sadun takes the lead in the water and with Talna's help manage to raise Balazar out of the water, high enough that Elle manages to grab hold and keep him from slipping underwater again.... and Balazar stops breathing. (He had passed 2 death saves immediately upon falling unconscious, and then proceeded to fail 3 in a row... he died a second time).
Balazar's vision goes from the black of unconsciousness to a gray fog. A deep, oddly familiar voice rings out in the darkness. "Again?" (we cannot stop laughing at this point, especially as Talna realized right after Balazar failed his last save she had Spare the Dying, a cantrip that would have stabilized him. The DM also would have allowed it to work on Balazar despite his current undead nature...)
"Do you take my gift as a simple trinket?" The voice asks.
"Well, I don't understand it. I'm just walking along and suddenly I'm running away, I cough a lot, it's a weird gift," Balazar says, "But I am glad to still be traveling with my friends."
"I wouldn't call them friends. But I find this amusing. Would you like another chance?"
"Sure. But I'll let them fend for themselves more this time."
The fog surrounding Balazar forms into a hand, which Balazar shakes, and then he is engulfed in fog again.
Back in the river, no time has passed for us as we see Balazar take a huge gasp of air and regain consciousness. "Let's get out of here you guys. I don't want to talk about it." Balazar tells us. With Balazar awake, we manage to all climb out of the river. We make a campfire and spend a little time drying off and warming up while Elle does some spearfishing (successfully tying a knot on a javelin for this). As we take a breather, we notice a windmill in the distance past the bridge. It looks to be about two hours away, so we decide to go there for a long rest, reasoning it will be better shelter than the bridge. We take turns in the carriage on the ride over taking short rests to recover some of our HP. We ride along the road about an hour, then turn onto a narrow dirt road that leads to the windmill. After the second hour, we arrive. We consider going inside, but something about the windmill puts us off, it appears to be in very poor condition. As we approach a raven flaps down onto the doorframe and croaks at us. Elle wants to spend some time figuring out how to talk to the raven, and we decide to rest the night with the windmill at our backs.
As Balazar nods off, sitting against a carriage wheel, he feels as if he's falling. Starting awake at the sensation, he finds that his body has phased through the wheel and he is halfway to the ground, the wheel protruding through him. He sits upright, and his body passes directly through the wheel.
A mystery for next time!
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